


time and time again

by livj707



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-04 21:42:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15156215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livj707/pseuds/livj707
Summary: harry's seen the green light of the killing curse 5 times.





	1. here again

Every time Harry sees the killing curse, there's something in between the green light and the dying.

It’s happened five separate times, or at least, five times it was ingrained in his mind. The green light is something he’s always known, something he’s carried around with him for as long as he can remember. Even before he saw it the first time, he’s always had a sort of  _ feeling  _ before it happened. First, there’s a sort of cold chill that raises goosebumps all over his body. Then, a strange pressure in his chest. And then there’s the ringing - is that what it is? A distant ringing noise, one that only remains for a few moments before everything goes quiet. But it’s there nonetheless, and it’s always such a hard thing to explain. 

The chill, the pressure, and the ringing. 


	2. reminding

And then the ringing stops, and his parents are dead.

Looking back on it years later, it doesn’t even feel real. It just feels like a bad dream. There’s the light and the screaming and the _sounds_ , sounds no more complex than the blow of the front door off its hinges and the ominous creek of the steps.

But it's real, and it happened. And his parents are dead.

One is nothing more than a resounding thud at the bottom of the stairs, and one is a blinding green light and a collapse in front of the crib with red hair spread out over the floor instead of framing her face as it should. Harry isn’t even a toddler yet, and he’s sat up in his crib and staring down at his mother’s unnatural paleness, standing out starkly in the darkness of his bedroom. And Lily had always been very pale.

Eyes open and unmoving. Green as the light that took her life away.

(And he would see another green light after this, and another one seventeen years from then, because it always happens and it’s all the same, again and again and again…)

Harry is one year and three months old, and he’s crying in his crib with black hair stuck up at all angles like it always does. And fear is pulsing through his veins, because the look on his parents’ face had told him something was wrong, and he had never seen that look before, and now they’re on the floor with open eyes that ceased to move and everything is quiet and everything is _wrong._  He would come to shape his life around this moment, around this trauma, as painfully unfair as that is.

It’s a distant memory, but it seems to come into focus more and more each year, more vividly in the ones after he finds out the horrific truth of his parents’ demise. Even if he can’t remember each moment in its entirety, the feelings and emotions are something that will always rest within him. They’re something he can no more forget than he can his own name.

This moment will resurface again, and again, and again. He’ll hear her screams on the train on his trip to his third year at Hogwarts. He’ll see her face in his dreams, a strange, distorted image made up of separate memories because his time to spend memorizing her face was taken from him far before he was ever ready to let it go. He’ll look into the mirror and try to see his father, try to imagine him with the same hair or nose or face shape that he had seen every day of his life.

And he’d directly face the green light again, but differently each time.

In one, fear, then confusion, then silence.

In another, pain, then understanding, then darkness.

And he’d think of them, his parents, both times.

And then the light stops and the world is quiet. And then Harry closes his eyes and it’s over.


	3. rewinding

And then the ringing stops, and Cedric is dead.

This one feels like a blow to the head, a dizzying feeling combined with an inability to see things clearly in front of him. And Harry can swear he isn’t really there. His legs have collapsed and his arms are spread out and his fingers are touching the grass, but he isn’t  _ really  _ there. There is music and singing and clapping, but he isn’t there. He’s merely an outsider on the edge of his seat, waiting for the story climax.

Even though it had happened in the graveyard, he only fully acknowledges it when they’re back on the grounds. At first there’s that odd detachment, but something falls over him in that moment. He’s lying there over Cedric’s body as all of Hogwarts erupts into cheers around him, and all he can do is wait, wait for them to notice, to see, to understand…

The full force of it would hit him later, when Molly Weasley hugs him in the hospital wing and it’s only a hurtful reminder of all he’s missed out on. That’s when it would make sense, become clear. But right now, he  _ isn’t  _ there.

The second green light is no less horrifying than the first, even when the body that falls isn’t somebody he’s particularly close with. But the open eyes and the still chest are all too familiar. The sound and the burst of light. The thick, heavy,  _ silence _ that hangs in the air, deafening him more than an explosion ever could.

He remembers the deep buzz of excitement that always seemed to follow the Triwizard Tournament, whether it be before or after a task. Even Harry was affected by it, holding the golden egg up high after being hoisted into the air by the Weasley twins as his name was chanted over and over again. But none of that seemed to matter now. All he could think of at this moment was how such a thing could  _ ever  _ seem important.

Somebody’s dragging him away from the body, and he hears a startling cry, one that stands out among all the rest - Amos, maybe? - but he can’t be sure, and he feels lightheaded and everything is numb and it’s all too familiar.

And then the lights dim in the cold hospital wing. And then he lets himself drift off to sleep and it’s over.


	4. removing

And then the ringing stops, and Sirius is dead.

This time, it’s Bellatrix; raising her wand, sadistic face lit up with excitement as she casts the spell without a moment’s hesitation. Harry doesn’t quite see it this time - he had been turned away when it happened and the light left as quickly as it had come - but he  _f_ _eels_ it. Feels it as a sharp, paralyzing pain, as if he had been stuck through with a cold knife; feels it with every sense except sight, somehow.

It hits Sirius square in the chest, and for a moment all he does is stumble backwards, as if he’s trying to catch his balance, save what he knows is unsavable. Harry and him make eye contact for a moment - at least, that’s what it looks like - and then he’s gone.

And Harry just watches, watches his godfather go through the veil with the same heavy, choking feeling that he’s experienced before, again and again and again.

And he isn’t surprised.

And he saw this coming.

And for maybe the first time ever, Harry doesn’t feel denial.

He falls backwards and is caught under the arms by Remus, he lets out a scream and cry he didn’t know he had within him, and he _doesn’t feel denial,_ because it’s the same, because he’s seen this before; over and over and over again, with his parents and his friends, with Cedric, with everybody...

He’s seen this before, he’ll see it again. As he screams and tears spill out over his eyes and he pulls against Remus’s hold until all he can do is collapse, he feels nothing more than a deep sense of familiarity. This feeling of fury and anguish and unspeakable horror starts from the pit of his stomach, grows until it’s all he feels, until it’s all he’s made of. It’s a feeling more familiar and more known to him than a hug from his family, a kiss from his parents. He knows loss better than he knows himself.

And he isn’t surprised. Not by the circumstances, nor by the fact that all he had left is, once again, crashing around him. Not by the fact that Sirius died because of him, because isn’t that how it goes? It becomes your fault that the people you care about the most have to die? Isn’t that how it works?

It’s all he knows, it’s all he knows...

He isn’t surprised. As the last cry tears its way out of his throat, becoming no more than an echo in the cold halls, he knows truly and fully that he’s been here before, maybe not in the same way, but in a close enough way to understand it.

And then he closes his eyes and he feels a deep yet distant throbbing in his chest, as if pain is all he’s capable of feeling. And then his legs give out and it’s over.


	5. regretting

And then the ringing stops, and Hedwig is dead.

It is a beautiful thing to have a best friend, to have something so constant in your life that you don’t even have to question it. 

He only stopped thinking of the Dursleys’ as a home when he attended Hogwarts - he only ever learned what home  _ meant  _ because of Hogwarts. Even disguised as quiet, calm suburbia, a prison is a prison.

But he had Hedwig. He always had Hedwig.

After the third green light, Harry can’t help but wonder if he’d ever told that to the faithful bird - which he immediately feels silly about, worrying about what he said to an owl before her final moments, but it’s true. If he ever appreciated her as more than a connection to the world he loved so much, a way to communicate to the people he cared about while behind locked doors of the Dursley household. He can’t remember if he had, and it hurts, in a deep and confusing and unexplainable way.

He remembers a conversation he had with her just a few weeks after returning home from his first year. He had locked himself in his room - on his own terms, for once - and spent most of the night rereading books from that school year. He spoke to her of Hogwarts’ great halls, of the nights spent wandering the ancient corridors, of the stone pillars and golden lanterns that framed hallways. He talked about Ron and Hermione, of all the friends he had made inside the wizarding world. It was as if the whole thing was a dream, one that would fade as soon as daylight came. He talked about that world like he was afraid it was nothing more than a memory, repeating it to himself out loud for fear it would slip through his fingers. He knew Hedwig didn’t understand any of it, for obvious reasons - but, still, a strange feeling told him that she  _ did.  _ And that feeling never faded.

Even now, that night is one of Harry’s most cherished memories.

Did Hedwig remember it?

Would Harry, in a few year’s time?

Her limp and lifeless body falls out of sight, a glimpse of snowy white against the dark, starry backdrop of the sky. And then she’s gone, just like his parents, just like Cedric, just like Sirius, she’s gone and she’s gone because of him and -

And then he and Hagrid speed up, and the Death Eater that took her life away without any hesitation is nowhere to be seen. And then everything is quiet and it’s over.


	6. forgetting

The Forbidden Forest holds a lot of memories and a lot of secrets.

The first time Harry found himself within its trees, he faced Lord Voldemort.

He was different back then, undoubtedly; weak and powerless and cloaked, covered entirely and just barely alive. That was only about seven years ago, yet it feels like a million years. And at the same time, somehow, it feels like only yesterday.

And they told Harry he was brave.

The second time, he faced a group of spiders. At twelve years old he walked straight into what he knew was more dangerous than anything he’d experienced before, but he kept his chin up and he kept walking because he had to, because the future of Hagrid and the future of the school depended on it.

_ (But it wasn’t fair) _

Time and time again he found himself in these woods, looked death and fear in the eye and chose not to be the one who blinked first.

_ (Because the future of everything depended on it and they would all die if he didn’t and and and) _

Those were times when he didn’t fully know the truth about his life. It isn’t easy for Harry to think of his childhood, it never has been; after seventeen years the first green light still lingers behind his eyelids. And it isn’t easy. Because he knows that there  _ was  _ an eleven-year-old version of himself who balanced homework and exams and other child-like things that were so deeply foreign to him, all while looking over his shoulder at any given moment because he was scared of being killed by something so much greater than himself. There was a child who snuck out to read books on things adults wouldn’t even care about, and now he knows why; because it’s all his fault, every death, every bit of destruction, every loss, everything…

There was a boy who, despite carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, didn’t know how to love. There was a child who learned to avoid the front cover of the newspaper at age fourteen (because what good would that ever do) all while fighting a fight that wasn’t truly his. And again and again he would face death, look it in the eye, being expected to be brave when he didn’t even know what that meant.

All because he was born to die.

All because this is what he’s meant to do.

The leaves crunch beneath his feet, and he keeps walking, and he doesn’t know why, because there’s nothing waiting for him. And still he keeps walking, paralyzing darkness and uncertainty bubbling beneath him like it did on that cold autumn night seventeen years ago.

He’s in the woods, and the green light is coming. His eyes are closed, but he knows. Because he hears shouting (the same shouting) and he feels a sudden cold take over him, and the world is silent but Hagrid is pleading, and everything is so utterly still…

And then he feels himself fall backwards.

And then his body goes limp and it’s over.


	7. here again, redux

But then he wakes and he takes a breath.

And then everything begins again.


End file.
